Sunshine is a nickname I was given in my first year of college from a friend. Falling Leaves is a book written by Adeline Yen Mah, following her book "Chinese Cinderella" and LEAVes if you haven't figured out yet, is my first initial plus my last name.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

9 - 1

Just when I thought my record was going to be 8 - 2, the Dodgers didn't let me down. After losing the first two game of the series to the Marlins, I was afraid the Marlins were going to bring the broom and sweep my boys during this last game before the All Star Break. Couple things from today's game. Top of first inning, Pierre made a great dive but didn't get the ball. Instead of being booed, the crowd cheered and encouraged him. Well, the crowd sitting behind me was anyway. Bottom of the first inning, Martin doesn't get much time to warm up on the on-deck circle. Guess he didn't need much time because as soon as he gets up to bat, he rockets the ball out to the left field box seats. Home run, Martin!!! The first inning sent all nine batters up to bat, going through the line up. Grady Little had to come out to the first base after Matt Kemp got there. It looked like he might have been hurt, but he stayed in for the rest of first inning. When the players came back out for the top of the second, Andre was in right field!!! Yay!!! Looks like Andre followed his buddy closely, because at Andre's first at-bat, what did he do? Sent a rocket into the right field pavilion, scoring Russell and Nomar. After Russell scored his third run in the fourth inning, they put in Lieberthal. Guess they wanted to make sure Russell was well rested and ready for his trip to Frisco. Lieberthal didn't do too bad. One for two. Russell ended up with two for two, plus a walk. Hendrickson didn't do too bad this time out. I was a bit worried that I might walk away with my second loss of my Dodger visiting days.

There were these two guys two seats over from me with a little girl, who was probably around two. I think they were making fun of me and my "Russell Martin" obsession. They were talking in Spanish, but I think that was what was going on. The little girl was adorable. She came over to me twice. I don't think the guys liked it too much. The first time, one of them was trying to get her to drink some water. She wanted to show me her doll, her "baby." I got her to go back to get some water. The second time, one of the guys was gone. She came over and asked me where he went. Then she tried to get me to put her hat on. I told her, no, her hat was too small for me and I had my own hat. She was sooo cute. She didn't want to go back, but the guy came and picked her up. And then there was this family two rows behind us. The entire row behind us was empty. So they draped their legs and let their feet hang over the seat. The dad got really mad about something. He left eventually. I'm not sure what was going on. I was paying attention to the game, but I heard a little bit of what was going on.

In case you haven't already heard about it, in the top of the ninth inning, some shirtless idiot decided to waste our time and get on the field. Security tackled him, and then some other guy decided he wanted to get kicked out of the stadium as well. Security had a little harder time to tackle him. But, security had a little easier time getting him off the field. They had to carry the first guy off.

According to what I read, it was about 80 degrees out. And about 44 thousand were in attendance. Well, the right field pavilion was pretty full. But the rest of the stadium didn't really look like it had that many people. As for the heat, but by the sixth inning, I was sweating up a lake. I'm glad I had mesh shorts on. But I was a little worried about getting a big ol' sweat stain. Also, I had gotten a souvenir cup before the game started. Halfway through, my soda was already warm. Thankfully, we brought three water bottles to the game. One of them was frozen solid. Who knows how many days that bottle had been in there. It melted quick. Good idea for the next day game I'm going to. Freeze a couple bottle of waters days before the game.

I had learned my lesson from the last day game I went to. Before we left the house, I made sure Joanne and I put on some sun block. However, during the game, I tucked my shirt under my strap, exposing more of my shoulder to the sun. The part of my shoulder that didn't get sun block on turned red, obviously burned. So now, my arm is mostly tanned except for this strip of red where I got burned.

Final score of the game? 9 - 3. Three runs in the first, five runs in the second. Great way to end the first half of the season!